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New Adventures of Superman: Superman Meets Brainiac
"Superman Meets Brainiac" is the first six-minute mini-episode of episode seventeen of the animated television series The New Adventures of Superman and the 50th mini-episode of the series overall. It was directed by an uncredited director and written by Oscar Bensol. The episode features the voice talents of Bud Collyer and Joan Alexander. It first aired on CBS on Saturday morning, December 31st, 1966 at 11:00 am. Synopsis Superman is at the circus for a charity event, with Lois Lane narrating his exploits. Superman wows the crowd by picking up two elephants effortlessly, and Lois says the climax will be for Superman to wrestle two wild gorillas. However, the event gets cancelled as the ringmaster complains the gorillas vanished without a trace. Superman then sees the elephants that were in his act shrink to the size of kittens right before his eyes! He then sees a green-skinned man use a ray on other animals, shrinking them as well, then enclosing the tiny elephants in a cage. Before Superman can stop this, the green man uses the ray on Superman and Lois, making them tiny as well. The tiny Lois and Superman are then put on the green man's flying saucer where they see rows of cages, all containing tiny animals of both sexes. Superman remarks this is akin to Noah's Ark. Lois says that is true as the green man identifies himself as Brainiac, and is from the planet Mega. Superman uses his X-ray vision on Brainiac and sees computer circuitry. Brianiac says he is a robot built by Professor Eckla. Superman protests that none of this makes sense as he knows Mega is a dead planet due to wars and famine. Brianiac says Superman is partially correct, that Mega's population was destroyed save for the Professor, whom survived and is working to restore life to his homeworld. To this end he deployed Brianiac to shrink all Earth animals and bring them to Mega, including man and woman. Once the flying saucer arrives on Mega, all the tiny animals will be restored to their proper sizes. However, Lois is still in possession of the wireless microphone she used in her commentator's job at the circus. Superman orders her to turn up the frequency on it, which creates annoying high-pitched feedback. This stuns Brainiac, and Superman destroys the main circuit of the robot. After that, Superman tells Lois it is "time for them to grow up", and uses an enlarging ray to return them to their normal sizes. Superman then returns all the captured animals, but flies away with Brainiac's saucer. Lois asks how come, and Superman says S.T.A.R. Labs would love to examine it. However, it explodes without warning. Superman says Professor Eckla must have realized Brainiac failed in his mission and sent a self-destruct signal. Cast Principal Cast Guest Stars Notes & Trivia * This episode is included on disc two of the New Adventures of Superman DVD collection. * This episode has been paired with "A Devil of a Time" and "Seeds of Disaster". * This is the first version of Brainiac to appear in a medium outside of the comic books. This version of Brainiac was created by writer Oscar Bensol. The original Brainiac was created by writer Otto Binder and artist Al Plastino and debuted in the pages of Action Comics #242 in 1958. Later stories revealed the character's name to be Vril Dox. * This episode states that Brainiac was constructed by a scientist named Professor Eckla and is from the war-ravaged planet Mega. The original Brainiac was actually from the planet Colu and was created by the Computer Tyrants. * There are several similarities between the animated version of Brainiac and the comic book version. Their physical appearance is identical and they are both artificial constructs. They both make use of a personal force field, a miniaturization ray and a space saucer. In the comics, the ray and the field are referred to as a Hyper-Ray and Ultra-Force Shield. In the cartoon, Brainiac simply calls his shield a "field of force". See also * The New Adventures of Superman * The New Adventures of Superman images * The New Adventures of Superman episodes * The New Adventures of Superman cast & crew * The New Adventures of Superman miscellaneous External Links * * The New Adventures of Superman at DCDP * The New Adventures of Superman at Wikipedia * * * * * ---- Category:New Adventures of Superman/Episodes Category:1966/Episodes